Brody is located in the
L'viv Oblast 53.9 miles ENE of the city of L'viv, 41.6 miles NNW
of Ternopil, 25.1 miles west of Kremenets, and 238.1 miles west
of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. Although Brody is less
than 60 miles from L'viv, which is in the foothills of the
Carpathian mountains, the land around Brody is very
flat. The original name, Brod, means "ford" and was
derived from the fact that the city is near the Styr River and
was built where the river narrowed. The present-day Brody
area is densely populated, with many small towns or villages
surrounding the larger city. "Brody" is pronounced as if
its English spelling were somewhere between "Bro-dee" (long "o"
in "Bro") and "Braw-dee," with the accent falling on the first
syllable.

Political History With Regard to Location

In
Toldot Yehudei Brody (The History of the Jews of Brody),
Nathan-Michael Gelber writes that Brody was originally a city
called "Lyubeshov." According to Gelber, it was founded by
a Polish overlord (Stanislav Zolkiewski) in 1584 and was
accorded the status of a city in the same year. Although the Encyclopedia
Judaica places Brody in Russia prior to the first
partition of Poland, an online write-up from Encyclopaedia
Britannica states that Brody's founding father was
Stanislaw Koniecpolski, a Polish military leader who established
fortifications there in 1633 to defend against the Tatars and
their Turkish masters. Regardless of any confusion about who
founded this city when, and what country it belonged to, it's
clear that Brody had an extensive Polish history. For a number
of years, it was under the control of Polish overlords from the
Sobieski and Potocki families and figured prominently in the
Council of the Four Lands, the Jewish self-governing body
established in Poland in mid 16th century and lasting until
1764. In 1772, with the partition of the Kingdom of Poland,
Brody came under Austrian domination as a city in Galicia--an
extensive mountainous area that included the northern slopes of
the Carpathian Mountains and the valleys of the upper Vistula,
Dniester, Bug, and Seret rivers. Between the World Wars, from
1919-1939, Brody was in Poland. After World War II, a portion of
Eastern Poland that included Brody became part of the Ukraine
area in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1991, the
area formerly referred to as the Ukraine gained its
independence; and Brody is now located within the country known
simply as Ukraine.

Encyclopedia Judaica
notes that as early as the end of the 16th century, the Brody
area had a Jewish presence, and that by 1648, 400 Jewish
families were recorded in Brody. A considerable accomplishment
of Brody's Jewish community in the 17th century was the
construction of a large synagogue, generally referred to
as Brody's "old fortress synagogue." Built to withstand
assaults, the synagogue was a sturdy cube with additional
structures at its base. (The Germans attempted to destroy this
synagogue in 1943. Although the building is no longer usable,
parts of it are still standing.)

Brody Becomes a Trade Center

Toward the end of the
17th century, the Jewish quarter in Brody was destroyed by
fire. Following this event, the Jews were given permission
to live in all neighborhoods of the city, to distill liquor, and
to engage in crafts and take part in commercial enterprises in
return for a tax that was levied annually. By mid-18th
century, Jews dominated the trades in Brody and Jewish artisans
from Brody were known widely for their weaving, their metalwork,
and other such products. During the four years of wars in
Poland that led to the first partition of Poland in 1772 and the
formation of Galicia, the Jews of Brody were forced to provision
the armies that were in transit through the city. This
would probably have been ruinous economically but for a loan
given the community and the even more important fact that Brody,
along with the rest of Galicia, came under Austrian domination
following the 1768-1772 wars. Austria exempted the Jewish
merchants from some of the taxes previously levied and supported
the Jewish guilds. Brody was made a free trade city, a
status it would enjoy for more than a century. The
Napoleonic wars and related trade blockade enhanced the status
of Brody as a conduit city for trade between Russia and Austria.

Religion in Brody

The Frankist Movement

From a religious
standpoint, the Jews of early and mid 18th-century Brody were
active in promoting Orthodox Judaism as expounded in the
Talmud. They opposed the Zoharists or Frankists. The
Frankist movement had been founded by Jacob Frank (1726-1791).
Born in Podolia, Frank was an ecstatic who had steeped himself
in the medieval mysticism of the Zohar and proclaimed himself
the Messiah. Central to Frank's doctrine was the notion that
salvation could be attained through sexual ecstasy, an idea
which was apostasy to the Orthodox community in Brody. For more
information about Jacob Frank and the movement he founded, click
on the below:

Hasidism was another
important movement that arose in Galicia in the 18th century.
This movement had been founded by Israel ben Eliezer (c.
1698-1760). Born near Brody in the village of Okup, he had
married a woman from Brody and resided in Brody for a time.
Orphaned as a boy, he was a dreamer, fond of wandering off
instead of devoting himself to his studies. Eventually, however,
he acquired a reputation as a healer and miracle-worker and was
widely known as the Ba'al Shem Tov, the "Master of the good
name," or the Besht, an acronym standing for Ba'al Shem Tov. At
the heart of the doctrine promulgated by the Ba'al Shem Tov was
the idea that a person who keeps God in his heart at all times
is superior to someone who steeps himself in Talmudic learning
in order to enhance his reputation. The Besht believed that
worship could best be accomplished through celebration and
encouraged singing, dancing, and enjoyment of the fruit of the
vine. For more information on Hasidism and its founder, click on
the below.

Haskalah, which literally means
"enlightenment," was the movement that finally took hold in late
18th-century Brody, spreading there from Berlin, with which Brody
had close commercial ties. The acknowledged father of the
Enlightenment was Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786?), a German Jewish
writer and philosopher. The approach to religion devised by
Mendelssohn was basically rationalist, assimilationist, and
pragmatic. Although Mendelssohn stressed the importance of
adhering to traditional Jewish values, he advocated greater
participation of Jews in non-Jewish secular life and in the
cultural and intellectual milieu of European society.

As detailed in the Encyclopedia
of Judaiasm, Haskalah stressed secular studies, including
knowledge of the language of the countries in which Jews lived.
However, it also stressed the value of a Jewish education that
included Jewish history and the study of Hebrew (though not
Yiddish). In its liberalism, Haskalah was the precursor of
Reform Judaism. In its recommendations that Jews broaden their
economic base by striving to enter less traditional Jewish
occupations like agriculture, though, it was also linked to the
concept of "return to the land" that helped to produce
Zionism. The liberal tenets of Haskalah appealed to the
Jews of Brody, and Brody became known as one of the most
important centers of Haskalah in Eastern Europe. This would
continue to be the case throughout the 19th century, even as
Hasidism became firmly entrenched in the rest of Galicia.

Brody in the 19th Century

An Outside View of Brody's Jews

In 1839, the Church of
Scotland sent a cadre of trained scholars to the Jewish
World. These scholars were not to proselytize but simply
to observe and record information as they traveled through
France, Italy, the Holy Land, Turkey, Germany, and
Galicia. The following account of their impressions of
Brody and its Jews comes from the book Narrative of a
Mission of Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in
1839, published by William Whyte & Co., Edinburgh,
1844. This material on Brody, as well as material on other
Galician towns, was contributed by Professor Joseph H.
Rubinstein in posts to the JewishGen Digest and can be found in
the Discussion Group Archives by those who wish to read a larger
portion than has been furnished here.

Adele
Landau,
later
Baroness
von
Mises,
spent
her
girlhood
in
Brody,
though
the
family
later
moved
to
Vienna.
In
the
late
1920's,
she
wrote
an
extensive
memoir
about
growing
up
in
Brody.
The
following
chapter
from
her
"Tante Adele erzählt" manuscript describes Jewish social work in
Brody.

After the death of
anti-Semitic Empress of Austria Maria Theresa in 1780, the
Austrian Government was benevolent to Jews and by 1868
Galicia's Jews had attained equal status under the law.
Austria did little, however, to further economic development in
Galicia. A railway to Odessa was built south of Brody in 1848,
reducing the importance of Brody as an international trade
center. Worse, in 1879, Brody lost its status as a free trade
city. And in 1880, another disastrous fire broke out. The
grinding poverty that had set in throughout Galicia was a fact
of life in Brody as well. In fact, "failed in Brody" was a
standard saying among Brody businessmen.

It may have been because
of this economic decline that S. A. (Samuel Alexander) Byk (c.
1823-1883), a writer born and bred in Brody, emigrated
from Brody in 1864, settling in Leipzig. Byk was the author of
four books, some of which can still be found. These were: Rechtsphilosophie:
Der letzte Grund des Rechts und seine practischen
Consequenzen bearbeitet unter Berücksichtigung der Möglichkeit
ihrer Verwirklichung ("The Philosophy of Law"); Die vorsokratische
Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer
organischen Gliederung dargestellt ("The Presocratic
Philosophy of the Greeks"); Der Hellenismus und der
Platonismus ("Hellenism and Platonism"); and Die
Physiologie des Schönen ("The Physiology of Beauty").

The Broder Singers

A Jewish man from Brody
who could sing had an unusual chance to do something to sustain
himself. The Broder Singers had been founded in the 1860's by
Berl Broder, who had apparently taken his name from the city of
Brody. Broder's troupe traveled throughout Galicia, and
also Hungary and Rumania, performing Yiddish folk songs. The
Broder Singers became immensely popular, and eventually their
vocal performances grew into entire skits, with dialogue as well
as singing and dancing. In 1876, Abraham Goldfaden, now
considered the father of Yiddish theater, joined forces with the
Broder Singers, writing a two-act play for them. The performance
of this play by the Broder Singers in Jassy, Rumania, launched
the Yiddish theater.

A number of participants in Yiddish theater productions
were from Brody. Steven Lasky has biographies of some of them at
his Museum of Family History site and will probably be adding
more, as this is an ongoing project. Once at the site, use the Find
feature under Edit in your browser, putting in Brody as the
Search term:

On March 1, 1881, an
event occurred in Russia which was to transform Brody into a
major center for Jewish immigration--though certainly against
the will of the local populace! The Russian Tsar, Alexander II,
was assassinated. Of the six conspirators subsequently rounded
up, only one was Jewish: a young woman named Gessia Gelfman. But
Russian fury over the death of the "Little Father," who had
freed the serfs and brought numerous other reforms to Russia,
vented itself upon the Jews.

Pogroms broke out, first
in Odessa at Easter time. From there the rioting spread to
approximately 200 other towns and cities in Russia. Jews from
the Pale of Settlement came pouring over the poorly controlled
Galician border, some on trains (Brody had acquired a rail line
in 1862) and some on foot. Their destination: Brody, only five
miles distant from the border.

There were already
15,000 Jews in Brody in 1881 out of a total population of
25,000. But Brody, suffering from economic problems, was
ill-prepared to handle the massive influx of Jewish refugees. A
French relief organization, the Alliance Israelite
Universelle, sprang into action, sending representatives
to Brody to aid the refugees and try to arrange for their care
and relocation. But no preparations could have been adequate in
dealing with the chaos created by the massive influx of
refugees. By May of 1882, there were 12,000 refugees in Brody.
More relief organizations had by then been sent in; but
nonetheless, panic reigned in Brody. The refugees were living in
squalid conditions. Measles and smallpox had been reported, and
it was feared that epidemics would break out. A German diary
written by one of the young refugees is revealing:

Most of the refugees
wanted to go to America, and many--especially the young and
strong--succeeded in getting themselves sent there, leaving
Brody by rail for Germany and Holland and embarking from ports
there. A movement to return to the Holy Land began in Russia in
1882 also. But these immigrants left from the Russian port of
Odessa rather than swelling the tide in Brody. By the end of
1882, there were few refugees left in Brody. There would not be
utter chaos there again until the 20th century and World Wars I
and II. Although emigration from Brody to other lands wasn't
over yet, at least it could proceed in a more orderly manner.

Brody in the 20th Century
According to the 1911
edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, by 1900 the
population of Brody was 17,360, with something like
two-thirds consisting of Jews. This was in spite of the fact
that in 1879 Brody had lost its charter as a free trade
city--an unfortunate circumstance which greatly affect
Jewish tradespeople.

Famous Jewish Writers

Among many
20-century luminaries who came from Brody was Austrian novelist
Joseph Roth (1894-1939). The best known of his several novels is
Radetzkymarsch, a nostalgic portrait of Austria and its
army under Emperor Franz Joseph. A previous work, of interest
for Brody researchers, is a travel book by Roth called Journey
to Galizia. An award-winning Austrian film-maker, Egon
Humer, has made a film, "Journey to Brody," about Roth and
Eastern Europe.

Nathan
Michael Gelber (1891-1966), author of The History of the
Jews of Brody1584-1943 (Toldot Yehudei Brody
1584-1943, vol. 6 of Arim ve-Imahot be-Yisrael, Towns
and Mother Cities in Israel), though born in Lemberg (now
L'viv), spent his boyhood in Brody. From 1918-21, he served as
general secretary of the Eastern Galician delegation of the
Zionist Va'ad Le'ummi (National Committee) in Vienna,
becoming first secretary of the Austrian Zionist Organization in
1921. Immigrating to Palestine in 1934, he worked for the next
twenty years at the Jerusalem headquarters of Keren Hayesod,
a foundation that rescues Jews from trouble spots throughout the
world and helps them make aliyah in Israel. While still
in Brody, Gelber had begun his History of the Jews of Brody,
which was published in 1955. An indefatigable historian and
author who was able to write in German, Yiddish, Polish, and
Hebrew, over his lifetime, Gelber produced more than 1,000 books
and articles. The most famous of these are works on the history
of Galician Jewry and on the Zionist movement.

Dov Sadan
(1902-1989), born Dov Stock, was another famous writer who came
from Brody. While still in Europe, he was prominent in
He-Halutz, a Zionist movement which trained Jews in agriculture
and useful trades for eventual settlement in Palestine. In 1925,
Sadan immigrated there himself, eventually becoming a professor
at Hebrew University, a member of the Knesset, and a prolific
writer specializing in Jewish studies and Hebrew and Yiddish
literary criticism. Sadan's contribution to the criticism of
Jewish literature was a unifying vision that emphasized
similarities between differing religious trends in Judaism (the
Lithuanian Mitnaggedic Movement, the mystical Hasidic movement,
and the Haskalah) rather than emphasizing differences.Sadan also wrote about what happened
to the Jews in Brody during World War I. As described in Ruhama
Elbag's "Brody Between the Lines":

A few days after
the outbreak of World War I, on a Sabbath in the month of Av,
the Russian army invaded Brody and set out to destroy the Jewish
quarter. The wealthy Jews had already gone into hiding, but the
rest were forced to flee to the surrounding villages.Sadan recalls
the Jews in flight, looking back at the town going up in flames,
their groans and cries of despair calling to mind the Jewish
lament over the destruction of the Temple. "It was the grief of
those who are watching their city of birth vanish before their
eyes," writes Sadan. Suddenly a man leaped out of line and ran
back to rescue those who were caught in the flames. "What do
dreams matter?" he cried. "A whole town, a whole Jewish
community is back there, and all we care about is saving our own
skins."

S. Ansky, author of "The Dybbuk," was a
famous writer who didn't live in Brody but visited and wrote
about Brody. His
description of what happened to Brody's Jews is similar to
Sadan's, though with more specifics:

Yet as bad as World War I was
for the Jews of Brody, World War II was to be even worse.

Before Germany invaded Poland and the
Holocaust began, Ze'ev Jabotinsky issued the following
warning:

It is already THREE
years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry, who are
the crown of World Jewry. I continue to warn you
incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer. I
became grey and old in these years, my heart bleeds,
that you, dear brother and sisters, do not see the
volcano which will soon begin to spit its all-consuming
lava. I see that you are not seeing this because you are
immersed and sunk in your daily worries. Today, however,
I demand from you trust. You were convinced already that
my prognoses have already proven to be right. If you
think differently, then drive me out of your midst!
However, if you do believe me, then listen to me in this
twelfth hour: In the name of G-d! Let anyone of you save
himself, as long as there is still time, and time there
is very little.

What else I would like
to say to you on this day of Tisha B'Av is whoever of
you will escape from the catastrophe, he or she will
live to see the exalted moment of a great Jewish wedding
- the rebirth and rise of a Jewish state. I don't know
if I will be privileged to see it, but my son will! I
believe in this, as I am sure that tomorrow morning the
sun will rise.

The Jewish population in Brody numbered almost 10,000 by
1939. In that year, Poland was attacked from two different
directions, from the West by Nazi Germany and from the East by the
Soviet Union. Brody was occupied first by the Soviets. But after
Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin, the Germans
eventually occupied Brody.

In the summer of 1941, a
Judenrat was set up and the Nazis soon began murdering Jews,
including a group of 250 intellectuals, who were shot near the
Jewish cemetery. Luckily, a substantial number of young Jewish
men from Brody had joined the Soviet Army, reducing the
population of those who could be led "like sheep to the
slaughter." There was also at least one family camp that
included Brody Jews in the Pianitza forests near Lwow. Members
of this camp were given arms by the Polish underground.
(According to Lester Eckman and Chaim Lazar, in The Jewish
Resistance, there were, in this camp, 80 of the 200 Jewish
survivors from Brody, Zlotov and the surrounding area, which
originally had a combined Jewish population of 45,000.) By the
time the order came to establish a ghetto in Brody in December
1942 and Brody's Jews were moved into it, the ghetto held in its
cramped confines only about 6,000 Jews out of Brody's original
Jewish population of 10,000. [According to the Encyclopedia
of the Holocaust and Nathan-Michael Gelber, writing in Toldot
Yehudei Brody (The History of the Jews of Brody),
the 6,000 Brody Jews were moved into the ghetto on January 1,
1943. In fact, Gelber states that the Jews were supposd to be
transferred to this ghetto in December 1942 but that a stay was
granted until January 1. However, Brody Holocaust survivor Gina
Lanceter has told the author of this site that she and her
family, as well as other Brody Jews, were in the ghetto already
in December.] Another 3,000 Jews from neighboring areas were
subsequently added to Brody's ghetto, and disease and starvation
soon began claiming lives.

The first of mass
deportations from Brody to the Belzec extermination camp had
begun, however, even before a ghetto was established. On September
19, 1942, approximately 2,500 Brody Jews had been deported to this
extermination camp. On November 2, approximately 3,000 more Jews
were sent from Brody to Belzec. Belzec was the first extermination
camp of three established as part of Operation Reinhard, which had
been set up in early 1942.

As detailed by Yitzhak Arad in Belzec, Sobibor,
Treblinka: the Operation Reinhard Death Camps,
orders for Belzec's operations came from Himmler in verbal form
only, as utmost secrecy was the rule. As noted by Arad,
however, Adolph Eichmann, who had visited Belzec and seen the
gas chambers there, wrote:

. . . at the turn of the year 1941/42, the chief of Security
Police
and SD Heyrich told me . . . "I come from the Reichsfuhrer;
theFuhrer has now ordered the physical extermination of the
Jews.
page 26

More than a million and a half Jews would eventually be gassed
in operation Reinhard. So thoroughly and so quickly were most
Jews murdered in Belzec that there were only a few escapes from
there. Only two Jews sent to Belzec, Chaim Hirszman and Rudolph
Reder, gave testimony in court, and only Reder is known to have
survived beyond 1946. (WARNING: The following material about
Belzec has been put on a separate, linked page because of its
disturbing nature. Please use discretion in accessing it. It
is not appropriate for children.)

Many Jews had been seized for labor camps,
and some Jews had volunteered for this assignment as a means of
surviving. But these, together with the last 2,000 to 3,000 Jews
who could be found in the Ghetto, were deported to Majdanek
extermination camp in May, 1943. A resistance group
(ZOB) had been organized as soon as Brody Jews were herded into
a ghetto. The leaders were Samuel Weiler, Jakub Linder, and
Solomon Halbersztadt. The ZOB unit established for resistance
within the Brody Ghetto had been armed with several guns by the
Polish underground. This unit did, in fact, open fire on the
Germans and Ukrainian collaborators involved in the final
liquidation of the Ghetto on May 21, 1943, killing some
of the Ukrainians. But houses were set on fire to trap Jews
attempting to hide in them, although in the mass confusion some
Jews, including Weiler, who survived the war in a partisan unit,
managed to escape from the Ghetto.

The other unit of the ZOB
had trained young Brody Jews for partisan activities in the nearby
forests. Thus, even though there were few survivors among the Jews
who had remained in Brody, there were survivors among those who
had left the city to join the Soviets or to fight with partisan
forces. The Ghetto Fighters House in Israel has the names of Brody
partisans:

Additionally, there were
Brody Jews who survived because of the efforts of Righteous
Gentiles who risked their lives and those of their families to
hide and protect their Jewish neighbors. Below are the stories of
some of these survivors and their protectors.

The Nazis succeeded in
destroying much of the Jewish population of Brody. Much of the
town itself was destroyed in the Battle of Brody. This was a
terrific battle that took place between the Galicia Division,
Ukrainians who were fighting on the side of the Germans in the
hope of winning Ukrainian independence, and the Soviets. The
Galicia Division was badly beaten, with tremendous loss of life.
But neither the enemies of the Jews nor the bombardment of
battle could completely destroy Brody's 17th-century fortress
synagogue. To this day, its shell remains and can be viewed by
travelers. Recent photos of this synagogue, as well as a
1914 photo of Brody's marketplace and a photo of Brody's
cemetery, showing vegetative incursion there, can be viewed at
Jewish genealogist Miriam Weiner's Routes to Roots Web site.

Brody has had three
Jewish cemeteries. The site of the oldest one now has a
warehouse on it. Another one located inside the town has become
a football field in what is now a residential neighborhood. This
former cemetery site no longer appears to contain any
gravestones.Here are some maps showing the Jewish
cemetery, with at least one supposedly dating from the 18th
century but appearing to show the same location for the cemetery
as on newer maps, so draw your own conclusions:

The newest Jewish cemetery is outside the town in an agricultural
setting. It was built during a cholera epidemic and contains
tombstones that go back to the first half of the 19th century.
These stones are unusually tall, some of them more than six
feet. The cemetery and its stones have been threatened by
erosion as well as vegetative overgrowth. Additionally, until
recently the cemetery lacked a protective fence or wall but is now
fenced. In 1996, Ukraine declared a moratorium on privatization of
sites identified as Jewish cemeteries and banned construction at
these sites. According to news received in August of 2002, the US
Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad was
given a grant to allow clearing of unwanted vegetative growth from
the cemetery.

Gravestone
Deciphered in Brody Cemetery Project

This undertaking was directed by Meylakh Sheykhet of
L'viv, who also discovered a larger area for the cemetery than
previously identified.

A project to photograph and transcribe information from
approximately 5,500 gravestones dating from 1834 to 1939 in
Brody's existing Jewish cemetery was initiated in 1996 by Dr. Neil
Rosenstein and Dr. Ben Solomowitz, with Rabbi Dov Weber joining
later. Although this project was completed, information from the
full survey is no longer available. Information from a portion of
the stones is provided here.

Another survey was more recently undertaken by Ami Elyasaf
of Israel, and that survey and the transcribed information from
more than 6,000 gravestones whose inscriptions could still be
read is now available. Photos of the stones are available also
by clicking on the small stone photo at the beginning of each
record:

Dr. Ben Solomowitz visited this museum
during a 1992 trip to Brody and reports that he saw many
artifacts 400-500 years old as well as many old photos of Brody
and a diorama of the town in the 1700's, with the synagogue
prominently featured and its fortress architecture in stark
contrast to the architecture of houses in the area.

A number of Brody maps, diagrams, and photos can be found
atAndre Locher's Castle of Oron
site, the URLs to two pages of which are below.
Although some of these graphics have been taken directly from
this Brody ShtetLinks site or the Brody yizkor book
site, there are others that did not have their
provenance at JewishGen and will be of interest to Brody
researchers. Monsieur Locher wrote to let me know of his site
and his borrowings.

Wolf-Erich
Eckstein visited Brody in 2010 and photographed a truly
extraordinary headstone: Tombstone
of Abraham Jacob Hilferding (Notice the "Translate" link at
the end of the article about the stone. Clicking on this link will
enable you to bring up the article in English or another desired
language.)

Yad
Vashem's Online Photos (Type Brody in the Search
window. Some of these photos are pre-War, some during the
Holocaust, and some are post-War.)

Brody Research

The Mormons have filmed the
records from some of the metrical books for Brody. The available
Brody Jewish records are for births and marriages from 1815-1871
and for deaths from 1815-1826 and 1829-1861.These
records are on microfilm (numbers 2405310-15), and the films can be ordered and viewed at
any Church of the Latter Day Saints in the United States which
has a Family History Center. If you wish, you can search the
Family History Web site directly at
https://familysearch.org/catalog-search. (For a
place search,you will need to enter "Austria,
Galizien, Brody (Brody)" in the window you will see.)
Alternatively, you can search for a family member at http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/fhlc/,
a search site the Mormons prepared especially for
JewishGen.

In Europe,
nineteenth-century vital records for Brody are located at the
Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine, City of L'viv:

In these Archives are
birth records for Brody from 1815-1871, marriage records from
1815-1871, and death records from 1815-1861 (the death records
for 1827 and 1828 may, however, be missing). There are also land
tax records which give the occupations of the heads of
households taxed, as well as maps devised for the purpose of
taxing properties. Researchers of land records should find the
following explanation of column headings helpful.

According to Miriam Weiner, the land tax records encompass the
years 1785-1884, though, too, these have been reported to go
through 1888. To see the location of various properties in Brody
in the year 1844, viewers may consult the 1844 cadastral map
provided at this site in the section headed "Brody in the 19th
Century." Brody school records are also archived in the
Central State Historical Archives in L'viv. Weiner reports that
these are from 1872 only, but they have been reported by another
researcher to extend from 1840-1900. (Weiner has found 1932 Brody
school records archived in Ternopol.) To see what the address of
the L'viv Archives looks like in Ukrainian, click on the link
below and scroll down to the appropriate place. The address for
the State Archives of L'viv Oblast, Ukraine, is also given here,
though what Brody Jewish records, if any, are housed there is
uncertain.

It appears additionally
that there are "All Galicia" books which list occupations of Brody
residents for 1860-1899 at the L'viv Historical Library. [See the
1897 Galician Business Directory, Brody Portion (by occupation),
in the section on the 19th century, above.] In L'viv also, at the
Jewish Emigration Society (JEAS), are emigration records which
include Brody Jews, but these are 20th-century records covering
the years 1920-1939.

There are also 1941-1942
Jewish ("mojzeszowe," meaning Mosaic) death records ("zgony")
for Brody at the Civil Registry Office in Warsaw, since these
date from a period when Brody was part of Poland. The fond in
which these records are located is: 506/0 Urzad Stanu Cywilnego
w m. st. Warszawie - Archiwum. Write to:

For more information,
including locations of a number of selected 20th-century Brody
Jewish records, see Miriam Weiner's book Jewish Roots in
Ukraine and Moldova: Pages from the Past and Archival
Inventories, or the Archive Database at:

In addition to records from
more than 5,000 gravestones encompassing the years 1834 to 1939 in
Brody's existing Jewish cemetery, Ami Elyasaf of Israel and
his team have indexed and put online thousands of surnames from
Brody 19th-century Jewish vital records. These surnames are the
ones found in Brody birth and death records from 1816-1861 and
marriage and divorce records from 1816-1871. [See the information
directly under Brody Research, above, to find out the years for
which vital records are available from the Church of the Latter
Day Saints (Mormons) and the L'viv Archives.] Ami's Brody Cemetery
and vital records information is available by searching at:

In her book Finding
Your Jewish Roots in Galicia: A Resource Guide, Suzan F.
Wynne indicates that the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York
and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in
Jerusalem both have early 19th-century bet din (Jewish
court) records for Brody on microfilm and the Central Archives
also have a microfilmed 1870 voters list for Brody.

Additionally, the Leo
Baeck Institute, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011
(212-744-6400 or lbi1@lbi.com), has in its archives a number of
documents, manuscripts, and memoirs of potential interest to
Brody researchers, especially those conversant with German.
These may be examined at Leo Baeck on Monday-Thursday, 9:30 a.m.
- 4:30 p.m., and on Friday until 2:30 p.m., except on holidays.

YIVO, also at 15 West
16th St., New York, NY 10011-6301 (entrance on 17th St.), has
lists from the Alliance Israelite pertaining to the great
emigrations from Brody in the 1880s (Record Group 406), as well
as a great deal of other material of interest to Brody and
Galicia researchers. To make appointments, address Aviva
Astrinsky, Librarian (212-294-6134 or yivo3@metgate.metro.org)
or Fruma Mohrer, Archivist (212-294-6143 or
yivo2@metgate.metro.org). Additionally, The Jewish
Encyclopedia has articles about distinguished Jews who
were born, lived, or died in Brody, Galicia. This is now online
(http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/index.jsp);
and entering only "Brody" in the search window will bring up the
relevant articles.

Information on Brody Jews
who came to the United States and are buried in 13 different Brody
Landsmanshaftn plots at various New York and New Jersey cemeteries
has been transcribed by Ada Green and is now available at the
JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR): http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/.
The data covers plots in Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island (New
York) and in Iselin and Woodbridge (New Jersey). A complete list
of Landsmanschaft plots in the New York area is available at the
Web site of the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York. Go
to: http://www.jgsnydb.org/searchcity.htm.
For Brody Landsmanshaftn plots, simply put "Brody" into the search
window.

Austrian researchers, and
researchers whose ancestors moved to the area of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire that has now become the country of
Austria, can find help at the following Website:

Additionally, in her book Jewish
Roots in Poland: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories,
Miriam Weiner devotes several pages to the Majdanek Museum
Archives. According to Ms. Weiner, it is possible to obtain
information, free of charge, about former prisoners of this camp
by sending a written request to:

Be sure to include as much information as you can about the
person being sought (full name, birthdate and place, parents'
names, address before arrest or deportation, and--if
possible--the date of arrival at Majdanek).

The author wishes
to acknowledge, first of all, her considerable debt to Andreas
Inhofner of Vienna, who acted as Consultant for these pages. Mr.
Inhofner steered the author in the right direction at all times,
and his historical knowledge and understanding were of
immense value in enabling the successful completion of this
project. Through Mr. Inhofner, the author also learned of the
"Tante Adele erzählt" manuscript and was put in contact with
author Adele Landau Mises's descendant John Kallir, who kindly
translated and donated the chapter "A Day in the House of My
Parents." Mr. Inhofner also contributed the interesting photo
tour through Brody and the tour of the Brody Jewish Cemetery
that appear here.

The author is very
grateful to Professor John-Paul Himka, of the University of
Alberta, for permission to publish his fine article, "Ukrainian
Collaboration in the Extermination of the Jews During World War
II: Sorting out the Long-Term and Conjunctural Factors." Special
appreciation must also go to Yitzhak Zorne of the Organization
of Former Brody Residents in Israel, who provided the three
Brody Jewish survivor stories that appear in these pages, and to
Moshe Lubianiker, who forwarded them and who, through his
resourcefulness and persistence, was able to aid in establishing
contact with the copyright holders so that permission to use
these accounts could be secured. The author is grateful to the
former Brody Jewish residents and their heirs who gave
permission for the publication of these survivor stories; and
thanks are also due Gina Lanceter, of the Organization of Former
Brody Residents in the United States, who provided information
and support. The author is additionally grateful to Boleslaw
Kulczycki for his two accounts of the rescue of a number of
their Jewish neighbors by his Righteous Gentile parents and to
Sabina Zimmer for forwarding the article about her stepfather,
Righteous Gentile Walter Ukalo, as well as to author Meyer
Lieman for permission to publish this article. And thanks are
due Jenny Lazar for forwarding information about Otto and
Liselotte Hassenstein and the story of Liselotte, a righteous
German, as well as to Susanne Hassenstein for permission to
publish Liselotte's story. The short history and
highlights of Brody from an early geography book that appear in
the first section of this Web site, the 1844 Brody cadastral
map, the Brody portion of the 1897 Galician Business
Directory, the outline with information on column
headings in Brody land tax records, and the 1890 Brody school
records were all sent to the author by Dr. Robert Sherins.
Thanks must go to him for these many contributions as well as to
translators Helen Bienick, Ann Sommer, George Wilk, and Gerard
Braunthal for permission to publish their work. Additionally,
the author is grateful to Janice Kinsler Smith, the genealogist
and friend who helped with the formatting of the Brody School
Records document so it could be published at this site.

Appreciation is due
Sabina Braunthal and Frederic Blum for their valuable photos
taken in Brody and Brody's Jewish Cemetery; and special thanks
are due Dr. Neil Rosenstein, whose projects will benefit all
Brody researchers and who generously allowed the author to
publish part of his Brody Cemetery database and also contributed
the photo seen above of an actual gravestone found in the
cemetery. Additionally, the author is extremely grateful to Dr.
Ben Solomowitz, who not only has served as Dr. Rosenstein's
partner in the Brody Cemetery Project but also donated the fine
photos of Brody and Brody metrical books that appear at this
site and supplied some of the information in the section on
Brody research. The German Army map, which originally came from
the collection of Tomasz
Wisniewski, was also sent to the author by Dr. Solomowitz.
The postcard showing the 17th-century Brody fortress synagogue
is from the Judaica collection belonging to Tomasz Wisniewski,
who has kindly allowed its reproduction at this site. Additionally,
Tomasz Wisniewski generously donated the four Brody postcards
that appear at this site under Modern Brody and are part of his
Judaica Collection.

Thanks are due Stefan
Wisniowski for help with Brody's early Polish history and Anne
Feder Lee, who sent material translated from the Almanac of
Jewish Communities in Poland, Warsaw, 1939, and called the
author's attention to Shores of Refuge, by Ronald
Sanders, the book from which most of the information about Brody
as a migration center comes. Thanks also to Lou Horowitz for
calling the author's attention to the S. Ansky selection from
the Yale University Press' edition of The Dybbuk and Other Writings. And thanks are
due Gerard Braunthal for his many important contributions to the
Brody Research section.

The historic photo
showing former Brody citizen Dr. Albert Nussbaum with a patient
and surrounded by other physicians in the Department of
Dermatology, University of Vienna, appears by courtesy of the Institut
fur Geschichte d. Medizin der Universität Wien (Institute
of the History of Medicine, University of Vienna); and the photo
of Adele von Mises at the beginning of her essay, "A Day in the
House of My Parents," appears by courtesy of the Leo Baeck
Institute in New York.

Last, the
author is also very grateful for the permissions from various
publishing houses to reproduce work published by them and to all
the people who allowed linking to images appearing at their Web
sites. And the author is extremely indebted to Richter Albert
Gideon Jr., grandson of the artist known as "Gideon," and to
Gideon himself for allowing the use of images of the beautiful
paintings and sculptures that appear in the above sections on
the Holocaust. Details about Gideon's Holocaust works seen
in these pages can be viewed at http://www.gideonmemorial.org/,
as can other pieces in Gideon's extraordinary collection.

The small bunch of
grapes was culled from the Bitsela Jewish Web Art site (http://free-bitsela.com/gallery/main.php);
and the animated menorah is from
http://members.tripod.com/~Dvorah/Holidays.html, though this
link appears now to be non-operational.

Last, a scanned
image of the beautiful painting "Friday Evening in Brody," by
Isidor Kaufmann (1853-1921), was sent to the author of this site
by Ami Elyasaf, and permission to display this image was kindly
given by the painting's owner, Benjamin E. Perl of London, in
whose collection this painting resides.

References

(In addition to sites with links in the above
Acknowledgements section,
following are some, but not necessarily all, of the
other sources consulted.Information was also derived from personal interviews and
correspondence.)

Eckman, Lester and Lazar, Chaim. The Jewish Resistance:
The History of the Jewish Partisans in Lithuania and White
Russia during the Nazi Occupation 1940-1945, Shengold
Publishers, Inc., New York, NY, 1977.

Gitelman, Zvi. A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of
Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present, Schocken
Books, Inc., New York, in cooperation with YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research, 1988.

Himka, John-Paul. "Ukrainian Collaboration in the
Extermination of the Jews During World War II: Sorting out the
Long-Term and Conjunctural Factors," Zwoje, Volume 16,
Number 3: Maj-Czerwiec (May-June) 1999. Available at: http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje16/text11.htm

Rosen, Adam J. "Hasidism versus the Haskalah: A Review of the
Nineteenth Century Conflict Between Two Major Movements of
Jewish History in Galicia and in Russia," Binghamton Journal
of History, Spring 1998.

Sanders, Ronald. Shores of Refuge: A Hundred Years of
Jewish Emigration, Schocken Books, New York, 1988.

Lichtblau, Albert. In cooperation with the Leo Baeck
Institute, New York and the Institut Geschitchte der Juden
in Österreich (Institute for the History of the Jews in
Austria). Österreichisch-judische Lebensgeschichten aus der
Habsburgermonarchie (Austrian-Jewish Life Stories from
the Habsburg Monarchy), Böhlau Verlag, Vienna, Austria,
1999.